Grammar experts, I need a little help, please.

[Cruzan]

I'm correcting a short writing assignment for someone and I want to make sure I'm not missing anything. The point of the exercise is simply to write in grammatically correct English and so I've tried to make my corrections minimal, i.e. the smallest change needed to correct the grammar rather than attempting any greater rewrite. The original version is above the dotted line, the corrected version below with each correction explained in a footnote.

[Richardo]

1. The convention is to spell out numbers less than "10"

Other than that, as a minimal correction it's OK.

[RebelOne]

2. Also, "compared to England, Scotland and South Africa"

should be changed to "compared with England, Scotland and South Africa.

[Rabrrrrrr]

3. I'm with Richardo on spelling out the first "4", though the second could stay

Since it's "Option 4". Or maybe call it "option number 4".

Other corrections I offer:

Not "with reference to" but "in reference to"

I would put "option" in the phrase "is the best because", to be "is the best option because"

"The cost for the next 5 years is lowest compared to" sounds funny - I'd go with "The cost for the next 5 years is lower compared to"; the business person in me also wants to add "projected" before "cost".

"have graduated from universities" I'd change to "are university graduates", but that might be a bit more rewriting than you wanted to do. Since you're talking about Indians, you could also write "have graduated university", since that's how they would say it. :-)

And you need a comma between "universities" and "so", otherwise you are saying that they graduated universities so they could be highly skilled.

[DFW]

4. One last minor detail:

At the end, I'd eliminate "the"

".....able to communicate with customers effectively and efficiently."